


the strength of caring makes me troubled

by idaate



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: AU where there are like 2-3 days between lb1 & lb2, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Sickfic, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idaate/pseuds/idaate
Summary: “I mean it,” she says, gripping at his arm and turning him to face her. “Don’t you dare.”Kadoc’s only ever been able to take words like that as terrible pity from others, lip curled and glaring as he lets them run their mouth and unable to believe a word of it. But she—He can’t even meet her eyes. She’s so damngoodit makes him want to cry.-Guilt's a living thing, as Kadoc learns it.
Relationships: Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova | Caster/Kadoc Zemlupus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 85





	the strength of caring makes me troubled

**Author's Note:**

> kadoc zemlupus grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and got me to finish a piece i felt ok with posting online for the first time in well over a year

Guilt’s a living thing, as Kadoc learns it.

The first day, it’s anger that comes out and bites the hand that feeds it in the most literal of senses. Mash is the one to offer him his first meal, eyes full of disgusting  _ pity  _ that he never expected, let alone wanted, from the meek test-tube baby that clung to Team A’s heels.

“We have to keep you tied up to that pole,” she says apologetically, guiding a fork filled with something that may be potatoes to his mouth. “Sorry about the quality, but no one here’s really living in the lap of luxury. Except, of course,” a smile, “our courageous Director.”

Awkward humor. It’s an attempt at bringing back some farce of camaraderie, some pretentiously gracious angel sympathizing the sinner below her with friendship and magic and other shit that’s all fake as hell.

Kadoc snaps at her, teeth snagging at her fingers before she jerks away, fork clattering to the floor. She doesn’t even look  _ mad,  _ that’s what pisses him off the most. Just looking at him all like he’s some sort of wounded animal.

“If you don’t want to eat now, that’s fine,” she says, holding her hand to her chest gingerly and pulling herself up. “We can talk later.”

Kadoc doesn’t turn to watch her measured, clicked steps across the room, doesn’t see the door shut. He just stares at the fork on the ground, its contents spilled inches away from his face when he tries leaning down.

_ I also refuse to let you take your own life once I’m gone,  _ she had said. Had she really thought him that weak?

She had a point, though. What faith could she have in someone like him, who didn’t even have the right to think of her after what he failed to do?

-

And thus, predictably, guilt dulls into depression. Helplessness, self-loathing.

He wakes up after a nap in the middle of the second day to taste salt on his cheeks. He wipes the stains away with his shoulder as best he can, heart beating fast in shame.  _ What if they’d seen. _

There were probably no whats or ifs about it; they’d be stupid to turn a blind eye to the mage in their own base for even a second. It wasn’t like most of them had much else to do, driving across endless snowy expanses and trying to find some appropriate place to Rayshift.

Someone’s bothered to clean up the food he spilled, though not well; there’s a streak of starch across the ground where they wiped it up. The sharp pain in his stomach scolds him for his negligence in passing up the opportunity.

The door slides open and it’s a little girl that walks through, this time. Kadoc doesn’t recognize her, but she looks enough like da Vinci for him to connect the dots.

“Sleeping beauty’s nice and awake!” she hums. “Took you long enough. Now if you could juuust drink up this soup for me, that’d be just peachy.”

She passes him a bowl of something warm and salty smelling that he hadn’t realized she’d been carrying. After giving her a very blank and pointed look, she laughs.

“Joking, joking. Genius’ remember not to give things to people who have their hands tied up. Speaking of which, I’m here to untie you from the pole if you promise not to attack anyone,” she says. Yeah, they definitely saw him. “We’ll still have to cuff you, but at the very least, you can lie in bed and relax a bit better.”

Biting and kicking hasn’t done him any good but a moment of sick satisfaction and an upset stomach. He nods at the ground, and da Vinci walks around to untie him. His shoulders scream in stiff pain as they’re finally relieved from the same uncomfortable position they had been trapped in for hours. His hands are brought to the front of him, his final unused command seal burning on his hand mockingly.

The cuffs click over his wrists and da Vinci gives them one last shake before nodding to herself, apparently satisfied and convinced that he won’t lose it and snap free of his confines. 

“Alright! Still gotta keep you in this room, but.” She slaps his back, causing him to stumble just as he manages to get up on his feet again. “You have a little more freedom now, before we end up starting to question you.”

He knew, however implicitly, that that would likely be the case. No reason to keep a prisoner of war around and alive when they were already rationing themselves to hell and back unless there was something in it for them.

Kadoc grunts and da Vinci gives him another pat. “You know, you should be thankful,” she hums as she places the soup on the ground and opens the door. “We were originally going to keep you in the broom closet, but our bona fina Master was kind enough to give up their entire room for your sake. Isn’t that nice?”

“Huh—” Kadoc begins, but the door has already shut behind her. He blinks as he stands uncertainly in the middle of the room like a newborn giraffe, looking around at his surroundings. There’s not much in it save for the bed whose post he was tied up to and the soup on the ground.

He picks it up and drinks too fast, burning his tongue in the process. It makes him wince and then internally curse himself for being so free to react. But when he’s done with the soup, he’s still standing up, and the bed’s still there.

_ That Master’s bed.  _ If he lays down there, it feels like an admission of some sort. In that case, isn’t it better to just sleep on the ground again?

He coughs and feels panic stab him with a dull knife. Not  _ now. _

_ You need to take care of yourself and get proper rest.  _ He can practically hear her voice in his head now, ever scolding. 

Kadoc maneuvers himself onto the cot. Even if he can’t bring himself to get underneath the covers, resting himself on softer sheets is more than enough to bring his muscles relief.

He scowls and runs his fingers through his hair. Fucking listening to voices of ghosts, now. Being sick has never lent itself well to his dreams.

-

She sits besides him on the floor of the Tsar’s hallways, his hands shaking and hers firm as she pulls his head out from beneath his knees.

“Kadoc,” she says, calmly, angrily, ice underlying her words same as it does her magic.

He turns away. “Sorry that you saw that,” he mutters, struggling to get up. His legs tremble like he’s some sort of fucking child, still stinging from his self-inflicted ordeal earlier.  _ Get a grip. _

“Don’t you ever do that again,” she says. She sounds more like the master than he could ever hope to have the right to be.

All he has the right to do is nod.

“I mean it,” she says, gripping at his arm and turning him to face her. “Don’t you dare.”

He’s only ever been able to take words like that as terrible pity from others, lip curled and glaring as he lets them run their mouth and unable to believe a word of it. But she—

He can’t even meet her eyes. She’s so damn  _ good  _ it makes him want to cry.

“Sorry,” he mutters under his breath. Her hand, ever stroking her doll’s head, reaches out to touch the back of his. Then, gently, it retracts, and her steps echo back through the hall.

-

When he wakes up again, he’s disoriented and groggy. 

It takes effort for him to pull his eyes apart, sticky and unpleasant and yet he can’t even see straight when they are open. The front of his head is all hot and gross. He wants to go back to sleep.

“Kadoc?”

He coughs and it’s so painful that he expects his hand to come away with blood. Sure enough, there’s red when he— oh, no, that’s his command seal. Dammit. It’s so fucking hot. 

And these people are so  _ loud.  _ Shut the hell up, why don’t you. He squints his eyes at the blurry forms in front of him and tries to make out fragments of their conversation amid hot flashes.

“He’s—questions—not super—ideal, agree?”

“If you’d—  _ before—” _

“—ask him.”

He’s hyper aware of things enough to recognize what they’re trying to do. He tries to push himself up, and someone clicks their tongue and holds him down.

“—this state—“

Despite himself, Kadoc feels the instinctual need to apologize.  _ Fucking hell.  _ This whole ‘guilt’ thing is really getting to him. He doesn’t need to give these people the time of day, let alone a ‘sorry’. 

Then again, it doesn’t matter what he gives them. Not anymore, not to him.

Kadoc doesn’t so much fall back asleep as he does get dragged back into it, head rolling off his shoulders even as someone grasped his shoulders and tried to shake him awake. 

-

Mana Transfer. Everyone knows what it is, what the most efficient way to do it is. Doesn’t make him feel any less nervous about it.

“Kadoc,” she says. He can’t even see her face now, from where he sits on the edge of the bed. The drapes on either side obscure anything within in shadow, and frankly, Kadoc doesn’t think he could deal with it otherwise.

“Kadoc,” she says again. The sheets shift from behind him and he breathes in a stuttering breath as she wraps her arms around him, bare skin against his back. “Is something wrong?”

“S-sorry,” he says, hands pulling on his ring finger. “I… I’ll be over in a moment.”

She doesn’t respond, then, arms pausing before withdrawing themselves from him completely. “If you do not wish to do this, I will not force you,” she says. It takes a moment of him stumbling all over himself to try and formulate a response, and by then she’s already wrapped a blanket around her form and stood up.

“You need the mana,” he insists.

“Do you not think I can handle this as I am?”

“You’re strong, no doubt about it, but Team Chaldea’s persistent.” Kadoc throws his hands to the side. “This isn’t the sort of situation where we skimp on being as thorough as possible.”

“It is fine. I am strong enough, as are you.”

“I-I  _ want  _ to do this with you!”

Her brows quirk. “I am not offended by your hesitation.” 

“I’m not lying.”

“Just because you want something does not mean there isn’t uncertainty, and I do not wish to force myself on you.” She leans over, grasping at the dress she’s thrown to the ground. “Honestly, Kadoc, I really don’t mind—”

The intention is to sweep her up and to kiss her on the mouth like in those movies, all tender and full of feeling in a beautiful impulsive sort of a way. He’s watched enough anime and listened to enough love songs to get an idea of how it should go.

But an idea is not any sort of reality, and so he trips and falls over himself and onto her in a bundle of clothes and skin. She stares up at him in surprise for a moment, both of their chests heaving before she smiles, mischievousness in her eyes. “Oh,” she says softly, sharply.

And she heaves, the room spinning in front of Kadoc’s eyes as she’s suddenly the one on top, now, hands on either side of his head as her hair hangs like a veil around her shoulders. Her breath comes in little puffs, dusting Kadoc’s face as he resists the urge to cover it in shame.

“I think I like this side of you, Master,” she says. “If you truly want this, then I suppose it would be very rude of me to not be self-indulgent as well.”

She presses her mouth against his. It’s all clumsy and their teeth clack against one another because neither of them  _ really  _ know what they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t try their damnedest anyway.

-

He coughs and sputters awake. 

It’s not fair that he doesn’t get to dream of nothing.  _ She’s  _ gone; she already gave him enough nightmares of staring up at faceless soldiers while bleeding out. In fact, he’d prefer that dream again. Far better than kind ones when the reality was… this.

Something gets pressed against his mouth and he pushes his head back, a whine coming out before he has the chance to stop it.

“I got you medicine,” someone says. Kadoc squints and tries to make them out, but his eyes refuse to focus.

“...’m not s-sick,” he manages to get out, which only makes the person in front of him laugh. That pisses him off, but the anger in him barely has enough time to flicker before dying out.

“Uh-huh. Open up.”

He doesn’t know why, but he does, mouth gaping like he’s some fucking baby bird and he has to bite back the shame as he dry swallows one, two pills. He’s handed a glass of water and gulps hungrily at it, throwing it on the ground once it’s empty and curling back up on the cot. Someone pulls the sheets up over his shaking shoulders.

“I’ll wake you up again for your next dose,” they say, and the glaring lights in the room turn off with a dull  _ click. _

_ I’ve probably been poisoned,  _ he thinks idly, but he’s asleep again before the thought has a chance to worry him.

-

Perhaps it's the rush of things going so damn  _ well  _ that makes it all fall apart instead of his own incompetence.

Ivan’s been killed by Chaldea, already on its last bleeding legs after hobbling around to the tune of Kadoc’s merry pied piper and not any better after being thrown against former ally after former ally. She was _T_ _ saritsa,  _ the title she had always deserved more than anyone else but was only now recognized by the land itself. They just needed to add a mate to the end of their check and it’d be over.

It goes so well that Kadoc feels like laughing, and then he feels like one of those coyotes in those old cartoons who go dashing right off the cliff’s edge.

He and they both hover in the air for a moment, grasping at straws.  _ I can restart it all,  _ he thinks, lips already forming a chant as the last command seal burns heavy on his hand.  _ I can fix this. _

Then they all fall down.

She’s first, bleeding out in his arms before he has a chance to realize what was happening. All he can do is stop and stare as she gasps out dying wishes that she  _ knows  _ he can hardly keep and she  _ knows  _ he could never refuse.

Then she’s gone, and after he’s got the butt of a gun shoved upside his head, he falls, too.

-

Maybe the guilt hits so hard because he just didn’t care before.

Self-loathing, helplessness, inferiority; all of those feelings he knew and greeted like old friends, knives stuck between his fingers like he had been born with them there. He doesn’t need to learn how to deal with them when they’re already integral to who he is.

But guilt is different, because to be guilty about something you need to have accomplished something in the first place.

Kadoc didn’t feel guilty about his and A Team’s death as much as he felt incredibly angry and wronged. If anything, it was that damned Chaldean Master who deserved to feel guilt every waking moment of their life, their climb to victory only possible after stepping on top of everyone’s individual corpse.

That’s why he never thought he’d need to worry about guilt, because he’s never accomplished anything. If he failed, then he’d be dead, and if he won, then he wouldn’t care about feeling guilty. She would be Tsaritsa anyway. Nothing mattered more than that.

It’s not great, caring. It’d be so much easier to be dead, and perhaps she knew that when she lay in his arms.

-

_ Kadoc. _

He’s shaken awake, not by hands this time but by the very ground itself.

His throat still burns. The nuisance distracts him enough for him to take a moment that he isn’t in the same place he last remembers waking up. He’s still on a cot, yes, but there’s an air of sterility and general dissonance that wasn’t there beforehand. It takes him embarrassingly long to realize that he’s in some sort of solitary confinement chamber.

The vehicle shakes once again, enough to toss him off the bed and bang his elbows against the ground. It’s only then that he notices the anti-magecraft cuffs, their remains scattered across the ground like pinata pieces. 

_ I couldn’t have done that.  _ He knows he couldn’t have because he’s not strong enough, sickness or not. He scowls and pushes himself up as the vehicle shakes, again and again. Someone’s clearly attacking it.

To rescue him…? No, he’s not naive enough to entertain that idea for more than a few seconds. He’s a liability to the rest of the crypters, now, and who can blame them for wanting to keep their asses covered?

But he can’t just sit around and let them kill him. He needs to survive, unfortunately.

Dragging himself to his feet, he winces and presses himself against the door. Trying the knob doesn’t have any effect, though he didn’t expect it to in the first place. That means he’ll have to bust it off its hinges, unless he feels like trying to go through the several inch thick steel outside.

But how…?

He rests his hands against the door, steadying himself more than anything else. He has to resist the urge from banging his head against it, if only because he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand up straight afterwards.

It takes a few moments for him to realize that the metal has grown cold to the touch. He jerks back, scowling as his fingers smart and only then noticing the ice that’s creeping over the edges of the door, freezing the hinges solid. He gives it a firm kick, and it falls over.

_ Kadoc,  _ says Anastasia.

No, it couldn’t be her. She’s dead and he’ll never be able to bring her back. He doesn’t have the right to. It’s his guilt that’s nipping at his heels, a noose around his neck that’ll doggedly drag behind him for the rest of his life.

_ Get out of here. _

For her, he leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> finally got around to reading lb1, and i really like kadoc man. i only read what's on the na servers, so no spoilers from content that hasn't been localized yet, please


End file.
